Whether you have one child or five, chances are you spend a lot of time worrying about the family calendar, volunteer tasks, sports, meals and how to stay on top of everything. You're not alone. In fact, other parents have felt the same strain and decided to act by using technology to solve the problem. These tech tools are designed to make communication, scheduling and planning easier. Better still, they're all free.
1. Cozi Online Family Calendar
Cozi is a free online family calendar. Each member of the family can log in with their email address and the family password. Enter in activities and events for each person and you'll end up with a color-coded family schedule. Each week, Cozi will email your schedule to you, but you can also access it online, on mobile devices, or even through a Windows 7 widget on your desktop. It prints up beautifully, so you can also take it with you. Cozi also has a shopping list that family members can add to, to-do lists, and a journal for keeping track of daily memories. You can send messages and reminders to other family members, as well. Have a lot of activity schedules to track? Enter in the team calendar, play rehearsal schedule and other activities so they are visible, but distinct from family commitments. And, if your team, school, or group has an online calendar, Cozi can easily add it to yours, so that you're always on top of what's going on. Cozi is an easy way to coordinate your family's complicated life.
2. Food on the Table
There are a lot of meal planning websites out there, so there's definitely something for everyone. What I like about Food on the Table is that they help you choose recipes for the week that are based on what's on sale at your local supermarket. Choose the types of protein you'd like to purchase for the week (choices that are on sale are labeled as such), and then browse menus containing the items you have selected. Once you've chosen meals, Food on the Table will give you a shopping list broken out by grocery store section. You can remove items you already have on hand and then print your shopping list and recipes. There is also the option to add your own recipes to the site, making it even easier to incorporate into your regular meal-planning habits. Food on the Table allows you to plan 3 meals a week for free, and up to 7 with their subscription plan. You can also use Food on the Table via iPhone and Android apps.
3. Divide the Ride
Between activities like band, soccer, Girl Scouts, and theater, parents do a lot of driving. Divide the Ride is determined to cut down on the time parents spend in the car, while helping the environment by cutting down on gas consumption. Once you sign up a group and enter in all of the family info, Divide the Ride makes it easy to break up the carpools by location. You then work out a schedule and Divide the Ride ensures sure no one forgets by sending out reminders. If one family needs to drop out, it can easily reconfigure the schedule to accommodate the change. And, if one of the drivers has a conflict, there is a built-in system that can ask each driver one by one if they can cover that shift. It's carpooling made easy.
4. Volunteer Spot
If you're not driving your kids around, you're probably coordinating fundraisers, snacks, class parenting, and a variety of other volunteer responsibilities. Volunteer Spot helps that process along by keeping it all online in a dynamic form. The organizer enters in the tasks they need, the times they need volunteers, the number of volunteers needed, and any other information needed. Volunteers can then easily go in and sign up for the time slots that work for them. Everyone immediately can see when a spot is full. Don't worry about reminders; Volunteer Spot takes care of all that for you.
5. Neer
Neer is actually a location-based app for iPhone and Android devices. It allows you to share specific location information with others (in this case, your spouse, parents, children). It can let you know when your kids leave school, and when they arrive home. If can tell you when your spouse leaves work for the day. And, it can remind you about a specific errand when you're in the vicinity of the location (such as a reminder to pick up the dry cleaning while you're in the neighborhood). Neer doesn't share your every detail, and it doesn't share with everyone you know - unless you want it to. It's just a nice, quick way for families on the go to stay connected.